The enduring popularity of the World Cup on a global scale is because soccer is largely considered the most accessible of sports, i.e if you have a ball that's big enough to kick, you can play soccer.
One of the biggest hurdles to e-sports at this point is that they suffer from the exact opposite; competitive games require a comparatively enormous financial investment. Pertinently, to start playing Melee or Project M you need to buy a forty dollar controller, a forty dollar game, a console that'll run you at least one hundred dollars, and an old CRT TV (which are themselves becoming more and more scarce and expensive). Not a lot of people have the time or money to commit to something like that, and even fewer people are gonna have the patience to not regret the decision.